Dr PR

This build is exquisite! It has been a part of my daily life for years to check for new posts. When it is done I guess I will have to find something else to occupy my time. Like maybe finishing my ship model!

Something I do not see often in weathered ship model hulls is salt at the waterline. It does build up at sea. Look at this picture.

Magnificent! It is a Christmas gift for you to have the finished model. Your pictures of it are a gift to us! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

In the 1970s we had four on and eight off watches in Condition 2 (1 in 3 watch rotation) - which was what we kept in combat zones (Vietnam) when not at General Quarters (Condition 1). However, to avoid repeating the same watch periods every day we had a 2 hour mid watch from 0000 to 0200 and a "dog watch" from 0200 to 0400. Breakfast was at 0700, muster/Officers Call at 0800, lunch at 1100/1200 and dinner at 1700/1800. We also had regular jobs when not on watch. Add to that the necessity to rearm every other day and refuel/resupply once a week and we were kept pretty busy! Do the math and you will find that it was almost impossible to get more than 4 hours sleep at a time, and some days that wasn't possible. After six to eight weeks 1 in 3 without much sleep on the gun line in the south or MiG hunting in the north we were sleep walking when "awake." Fatigue was an issue!

I have wondered about shellac "going bad." I did find one reasonable explanation - the alcohol solution will absorb water from the atmosphere if left open in high humidity. Apparently the water clouds the solution or something like that, and maybe it spoils the finish. But these are only the "best guess" explanations I have found. However alcohol is hygroscopic and will absorb moisture from the air, becoming diluted with time. Manufacturers recommend using 95% ethanol to dissolve shellac flakes. I have also heard that the flakes will absorb moisture so they should be kept sealed. Manufacturers recommend storing them in a cool place. I have never had a problem with "old" shellac.

This is just a guess since I don't know what you are trying to glue together and what you want to do after that. How about shellac? You can glue everything together with shellac, work it as a single piece and later separate everything with denatured alcohol (95% ethanol). An added bonus is that the shellac will leave a good finish on the wood that can be left "natural" or painted.

I have used several types of epoxy for decades and have never had a curing problem because I am meticulous about getting the mixture exactly as the manufacturer recommends. I have used a thin two part epoxy "paint" that model airplane builders use to seal the wood on motor mounts so fuel cannot soak into it. It has the consistency of house paint (thicker than water but thinner than honey. I seal the interior of planked hulls with it. It penetrates into the wood, between individual planks, and between planks and bulkheads. This prevents cracks from appearing between planks years after the model was built. It makes a very solid hull! You can also find epoxy paints. We used them in the magazines on a ship I was on. They are similar to the epoxy sealer mentioned above. I also advise caution about thinning epoxies. The mixture ratio is critical for a good cure. Rather than try to thin a thick epoxy it would be much better to get the epoxy sealer or the model airplane epoxy.

Sometimes when in port the sails were partly unfurled and hanging loose to allow them to dry. This is another option for modeling.

Here are the most useful references I have found so far for topsail schooners and early Revenue cutters: 1. To me the most important reference is Howard Chapelle's The Baltimore Clipper (Edward M. Sweetman Co., New York, USA, 1968). It has a lot of information about the development of topsail schooners and lots of drawings and illustrations. More importantly, it lists the dimensions of actual vessels in the early 1800s. It has many sail plan drawings, but says little about the rigging. 2. The Global Schooner by Karl Heinz Marquardt, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland, USA, published by Conway Maritime Press, London, 2003. This book is devoted to the history and construction of schooners. It has an exhaustive history of the schooner rig - the best I have seen. The book has very detailed chapters on masts and rigging with detailed drawings. Numerous tables in the appendices give rules and dimensions for mast, spars and rigging. It is the most complete text on schooner rigging that I have found. It is a large book (11.6 x 10 inches, 294 x 254 mm) with 239 pages containing many detailed drawings, full page ship plans and illustrations. 3. Lennarth Petterson's Rigging Fore-and-Aft Craft (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland, USA, 2015) has a section on topsail schooners, and most of this also applies to straight fore-and-aft schooners. He has drawings showing just about every possible line you could have on a schooner, but it is doubtful if any one ship carried all of the rigging he shows. 4. John Leather's The Gaff Rig Handbook (Wooden Boat Books, Brooklyn, Maine, USA, 2001) gives a lot of detail for rigging modern fore-and-aft yachts and racing boats, but much of this isn't very useful for 19th century and earlier vessels. However, he does give the history of the development of different types of rigs, mainly focusing on British vessels. But the book doesn't have a useful index and finding information about a particular rigging detail is like looking for a needle in a haystack. 5. An excellent reference for fishing schooners and schooners in general is Howard Chapelle's The American Fishing Schooners 1825-1935 (W. W. Norton & Company, New York, USA, and London, Great Britain, 1973). It has some hull and sail plans for schooners. The "Notebook" after the history pages has 369 pages of drawings and notes about how Gloucester fishing schooners were built and rigged! Much of this applies to all types of small sailing vessels and a lot of this information doesn't seem to be available anywhere else. 6. Harold Underhill's Sailing Ship Rigs and Rigging (Brown, Son & Ferguson, Glasgow, Scotland, 1969) has general sail plans for many types of ships and boats but not much about the actual rigging. But it does have a useful glossary. 7. I also have Underhill's Masting and Rigging the Clipper Ship and Oceanic Carrier (Brown, Son & Ferguson, Glasgow, Scotland, 1972). It is an excellent book with a tremendous amount of detail about sails and rigging. It is mostly for British clipper ships, but it has a section on schooners. Most of what he writes about are rigs of the last half of the 19th century and early 20th century. If you are interested in clipper ships this is a must have! The index is very complete, listing every detail of rigging that is in the book. 8. James Lees' The Masting and Rigging of English Ships of War 1625 - 1860 (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland, USA, 1990) is almost entirely about larger square riggers. However it does give a lot of detail about parts of rigging that does apply to schooners. More importantly, it tells how to determine the dimensions of spars, rigging, blocks and such based upon the mast diameter, and has lots of tables. But some caution is necessary because fore-and-aft rigs are much lighter than square rigs, and mast diameters are usually smaller for schooners. And the text can be confusing because he often fails to explain exactly what dimensions he is referring to. Mast and spar dimensions are usually diameters but rope dimensions are circumferences. Divide by PI (3.14159) to get the rope diameter. The biggest problem I have had is all the nautical jargon these authors use, usually without any glossary. And different authors use different arcane terms for the same things. Some authors think a work cannot be scholarly unless it is written so an ordinary person cannot understand it, and use "five dollar words" where a "nickle" word would do just as well. I have found three books indispensable for translating the nautical jargon into meaningful explanations: 9. The Young Sea Officer's Sheet Anchor by Darcy Lever in 1808 (reprinted by Algrove Publishing Ltd., Ottowa, Ontario, Canada, 2000) tells the novice officer or seaman how to rig a ship - every detail of how to put all the pieces of the masts and rigging together. It is essentially an illustrated glossary of nautical terms and a how-to book. But there isn't a lot about fore-and-aft rigs. 10. The Art of Rigging by George Biddlecombe in 1925 (reprinted by Echo Point Books & Media, LLC., Brattleboro, Vermont, USA, 2016) is based upon David Steel's 1794 The Elements and Practice of Rigging and Seamanship. It has an excellent glossary and many illustrations. Again, not much about schooners. I think you can find Steel's original book on line as a PDF file. 11. A good general reference is Wolfram zu Mondfeld's Historic Ship Models (Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., New York, USA, 1989) although it is oriented to square rigged ships and doesn't have much to say about schooners. But it has a tremendous amount of detail about all parts of wooden ships and a lot of the history of different configurations. It has lots of diagrams and text describing the parts of ships' hulls, rigging, sails and such. The book has tables for figuring the dimensions of mast and spars. It is one of the best references for sailing ship modelers. **** You have the best editions of Chapelle's “The History of American Sailing Ships” and “The Search for Speed Under Sail 1700-1855”. Later editions are quite inferior, with a smaller page size and the former two-page drawings are reproduced on single pages.

The liquid flux I am using now is LA-CO Industries N-3 All Purpose Flux. It is a poisonous water solution of hydrochloric acid and zinc chlorides. To clean it just wash with clear water. At work we used a citric acid based flux (I don't recall the brand), but I really liked it because it smelled like orange juice! I'll echo what Roger says about using very thin solder to control the amount being applied. I have soldered electronics circuitry for at least 50 years, and I used resin core solder for much of that. But one day I was watching a newly hired young woman in our assembly area solder some ICs onto boards I had designed. The pin spacing on the quad flat packs was only 0.5 mm (0.020") with 0.005" (0.127 mm) gaps between the pins. Trying to solder them with resin flux was a major headache. I got solder bridges on at least half of the pin pairs, and it took time to clean them up. But this woman was using the citric acid based liquid flux, applying it with a small paint brush across all the pins. She just put a blob of solder on the end of the iron and wiped it across all of the pins on one side in a quick swipe! Do that with resin flux and the entire thing would be a solder bridge. But to my amazement the solder blob flowed over the pins, and as it passed one by one a tiny amount of solder flowed under the pins in the liquid flux. There were no solder bridges and at the end of the pass there was still a blob of solder on the iron tip!! Under the microscope every one of the IC pins had a perfect solder fillet!!! She soldered these 60-80 pin ICs in just a few seconds, and with resin it would take ten minutes or more. The beauty of liquid fluxes is that they flow with capillary action and draw the solder into the joint between even the tightest fitting parts. We just put the soldered boards into an ordinary dish washer (without soap) and ran it through the rinse cycle. For small quantity hobby work just hold the pieces under running water for a few seconds. I am told you can use lemon juice as a flux, but it would contain a lot more contaminants than a pure citric acid solution. It would probably leave some charred organic compound residue. You can use liquid fluxes with ordinary soldering irons or resistance soldering tools. For high powered soldering guns I would use resin core or acid core (depending upon the metals) solders - the liquid flux might boil away too quickly before the solder had flowed completely.

Valeriy, It is a gorgeous model! Your work serves as inspiration for other modelers. Thank you for your perseverance in this project, and best wishes for your future!

Acetone is an excellent solvent for resin solder flux. We used to use it for cleaning circuit boards. Now we use water soluble flux that cleans up easily with water and seems to do a better job that resin.

This is an interesting model of an interesting vessel. Harold Hahn's book "The Colonial Schooner 1763-1775" (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland, 1981, 176 pages) contains an extensive history of Hannah, six large two-page (8 1/2" x 11" pages) drawings and dozens of photos and detail drawings of the model. It is a "reconstruction" based upon plans of contemporary schooners and shipping records for the Hannah. At the time the book was written no actual plans of the Hannah were known. The book also discusses other colonial period schooners, including drawings and photos of a model of the Halifax and several other schooners. It is available on Amazon for US$12 to US$44. It would make a ice Christmas present if you don't already have it (drop a hint).

It is always annoying when the other grandparents want your grand kids over for Christmas!

I have puzzled over the location of belaying points, and after studying the few plans that I could find, and thinking about it for a while I came up with the following general rules: 1. Lines that attached to the masts and near the center of yards, or passed through blocks attached to the masts and near the centers of yards, usually led down to belaying points at the base of the mast (fife rails, ring bolts in deck, etc.). However in some cases lines from the highest parts of the mast (topgallants and royals) were led down to belaying points at the bulwarks (pin rails, cleats or ring bolts in the deck). Sometimes these lines ran through thimbles tied to shrouds and then to belaying points below. 2. Lines leading from the ends of yards ran down to belaying points on the bulwarks (pin rails, cleats or ring bolts in the deck). Some from the longer lower yards led from outboard through sheaves in the bulwarks to belaying points on the bulwarks. Some ships had cleats tied to the shrouds that served as belaying points. 3. Lines from lower down were led to forward belaying points and lines from higher up led to more aft belaying points. This was especially necessary where masts had significant rake aft. 4. Lines from near the foot/jaws of booms and gaffs led down to belaying points near the base of the mast. Lines from the ends that swung outboard were run down to belaying points near the bulwarks. However on some vessels the lines from the ends of booms led back along the boom to tackle and/or cleats on the boom near the jaws. And in some cases these lines from the ends of booms belayed to tackle that rode on a "horse" on the deck that allowed the tackle to slide port and starboard according to the tack. **** The goal was too run each line fair so it did not foul (tangle with) other lines, yards, sails, etc. If you think about it this all makes sense. And this varied in different types of ships and even between ships of the same type. The actual belaying points varied from ship to ship depending on whether or not it had fife rails, cleats on the mast or just ring bolts in the deck (or a combination of these). Or perhaps it just had cleats on the bulwarks instead of pin rails. All of this evolved with time. And in the end it was up to the Captain or bosun to decide what arrangement was easiest to manage. I have seen several accounts telling how the rigging and belaying arrangement changed on a ship after the Captain had seen a "better" way on another ship. **** We rarely find a detailed description of belaying points for a particular vessel because everyone knew how it was done. So the ship modeler has to serve as the bosun who decides how to run and belay the lines.

Excellent! Glad to see you are OK.

Laptops have the advantage of being compact all-in-one products. I suspect even the cheapest laptop can be used for sending and receiving photos, email and Internet browsing IF it has a real operating system like Windows or Linux (Andriod). I can't imagine one that won't do anything you want to do over the Internet, except the cheapest might have trouble playing high-level video games or viewing movies off the Internet. If you are familiar with Windows avoid Apple products at all cost! I occasionally have to use an Apple laptop and I find it much harder to work on that Windows. I have a relatively inexpensive ($600) Toshiba laptop that I use for all email, Internet browsing, etc. I also carry it with me on trips and vacation. Laptops have a MUCH better keyboard that tablets (but not nearly as nice as a real desktop keyboard). I find the typical laptop touch pad to be extremely cumbersome. I usually plug in a USB trackball. For serious CAD work, writing and photo editing I have a high end ($$$) desktop workstation.

Paint had another function in addition to protection. It gave the crew something to do, keeping them busy. "Idle hands are the Devil's workshop." When a very junior officer I asked my Department Head why we didn't use epoxy paints on the exterior of the ship (we used them in magazines and they held up for many years). He enlightened me about the benefits of having the crew constantly chipping, applying primer, and then the final paint. I think that grey paint must have been water soluble because it never lasted long before rust started to show again. And we were a flagship that frequently visited foreign ports, so rust was not allowed to show. When the crew weren't painting they were holystoning the decks! It was mostly "busy work."

Esap, With the thin planks you are working with it will be very difficult to get much curvature across the thick dimension. It is like trying to bend a strip of paper - it will fold before it bends. There just isn't enough thickness in your 0.6 mm planks to allow much bending. I built several plank on bulkhead models years ago before the Internet and without books telling me how to do it "right." I didn't know anything about soaking, heating and bending wood. For these I just tapered the planks. After one plank was glued in place I placed another against it and marked it at each bulkhead the amount needed to be removed. Then I trimmed the plank edge with a hobby knife and sandpaper. It took two or three passes to get a good fit all along the length. I did end up with very narrow pointed planks at the bow - less that 1/3 the original plank width in some places. Where the gap between planks opened up I just cut triangular stealers to fill the gaps. I wouldn't say the results were beautiful, but I was planning to seal the wood and paint the hulls anyway. Perhaps the most important step comes with the shaping of the garboard plank - the first plank outboard the keel. If this is tapered to a point at the bow where the stem just starts curving upward you won't have to trim as much from the subsequent planks. A more elegant technique would be to trim the planks similar to what is shown in this picture from zu Mondfeld's "Historic Ship Models." I understand what you say about the planks not being wide enough to do the "hooking" as shown on the right where the hook is wider than the rest of the plank. But maybe you don't have to make it any wider than the plank and cut the notch behind the hook only half the thickness of the plank. Just taper the garboard plank to the place where the plank is half the width of the original plank width and attach it to the hull. Then taper the next plank the same way then notch it to fit over the end of the garboard plank, and so on. I confess I haven't tried this, but it seems to me it should work with either the "pointed" version (English) on the left in the picture or the "hooked" version (Dutch) on the right. And if you want to leave the wood unpainted it would be a bit more elegant than the extreme tapering i mentioned above.

Jim, The hull construction of the Cleveland class cruisers of the late 1930s and 1940s had the same complicated plating you described. Basically, the plating thickness (pounds per square foot) was thinnest high on the hull at the main deck and thickest at the keel, and thinner at bow and stern and thickest midships. To make it more interesting the bow had five vertical strakes! The plates were welded at bow and stern and riveted midships. And the overlapping pattern for strakes was very irregular. One difference is that the armor belts were bolted outside the hull plating. I think you have answered your question already. At 1:192 the thickness differences between adjacent plates is insignificant. so I wouldn't worry about it. Your design should just start with the Table of Offsets dimensions for the "molded breadth" for the inside of the plating. Then, if you have the plating blueprints that show plating weight (thickness) add this to the frame dimensions to get the external hull dimensions. This is your starting point. Now you have to make a decision. What material and thickness will be used for the actual hull exterior surface (plating)? For simplicity in model building use the same material thickness over the entire hull. With this value, just generate a parallel line to the exterior frame/section lines and cut the bulkheads to these dimensions. That way, after the hull plating is added the hull will be the correct dimensions. Because the differences in plating thickness between plates within strakes is insignificant as scale don't worry about it. A you said, where the thicknesses vary the edges of the thicker plates were ground down or beveled to reduce drag. If you want to show plating overlaps between strakes on the model there is a very simple but effective way to do this. First just make the model hull with smooth surfaces (no plating). Then use masking tape to mask off the inside plates (yes this can be quite complex). Then spray a thick coat of primer over the hull. After it has dried remove the tape. This leaves very subtle thin edges between the outer and inner strakes that is good enough for modelling purposes. Where a strake may be overlapped on one edge and then overlap the opposite adjacent strake you may have to retape at the overlapped edge and apply another coat of primer. I hope you can follow what I said, but it seems you are very familiar with the blueprints so it should make sense. Here is a link to an exquisite model of a plated hull using this technique - start at post #72: https://modelshipworld.com/topic/19333-cruiser-varyag-1901-by-valeriy-v-scale-175/page/3/#comment-595525 Then go to the end of this thread to see some of the best modeling work you will ever see! I ran into one major problem when trying to create my CAD model of the USS Oklahoma City hull. The plating blueprints show a "flat" pattern for the plating overlap pattern, but do not show the elevation on the curved hull surface for the strake edges. After reading through hundreds of blueprints I came across the Table of Sight Edges in 81 blueprint pages titled "Mold Loft Offsets." These were the surveying instructions for locating the vertical position of hull plates in the framing of the ways. And the frames were added after the strakes were laid down. To see how I used this information to model the plating look here https://modelshipworld.com/topic/19321-uss-oklahoma-city-clg-5-1971-3d-cad-model/#comment-590610 or here: https://www.okieboat.com/CAD hull.html

I think the most common problem folks have in transitioning from 2D drawings to a 3D model is they re still thinking in 2D drafting table terms. 2D CAD programs are designed to replicate the 2D drafting table operations, creating a 2D image, but with an extensive set of tools to make the job easier. But for 3D drawing you have to forget what you learned for 2D work and learn to visualize the 3D structure of the object. You aren't creating a "drawing" in 3D, you are creating a virtual 3D object, and many (most?) of the tools in 3D CAD are different from 2D.. You need to understand 3D geometry. For me 3D design is more like working with a milling machine or lathe than with a pen and paper. However, in the end you may need to generate 2D drawings in the proper projections. Unless your 3D design is going directly to a CNC (computer controlled machine) you will need 2D images for the machinists. The programs I have used produce top, side and front hidden line images, and they allow you to rotate the object at any angles/perspectives and generate a hidden line drawing or a shaded image.

I have wondered about the vertical rail with pins. I suppose you could belay lines that don't get changed often to the lower pins, and more frequently used lines to the upper pins. But it does look like things could get tangled. He is supposed to have made the drawings from a period model. I do not recall having seen this arrangement anywhere else. The horizontal circular pin necklace around the main mast has a couple of issues. It could be above or below the boom, but if above it would interfere with the mast hoops if they are used. Below the boom the after most pins could not be used to belay lines coming from above. I am thinking of using a necklace near the base of the fore mast to belay some of the tackle. This would free up some pins on the fife rail. I have not decided whether it has pins or cleats.

George, Thanks for posting your spreadsheet. I had completed a preliminary belaying plan for my topsail schooner, but I am not happy with the crowding around the base of the fore mast. I will study your plan and try to come up with something better than I have now. Maybe a mast band with either pins or cleats would help.

Kieth, I really admire your work. Germania Nova is beautiful! I see you are thinking of modeling a steam yacht, and it sounds like you haven't decided on what to build. Below is a link to a modeling project for the very interesting steam yacht SS Delphine owned by Horace Dodge (Dodge Motor Company). I thought you might be interested. It is very well documented. http://www.shipmodels.info/mws_forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=349671&start=120

Here is a link to a 1.1" quad 3D print project: http://www.shipmodels.info/mws_forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=374129 Hank might send you the files or print them for you if you ask nicely.